Lucky Hank Review: Bob Odenkirk as Curmudgeonly Professor Looks Better on Paper

Like its bristly protagonist, the series has some work to do to turn things around.

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Lucky Hank
Photo: Sergei Bachlakov/AMC

William Henry “Hank” Devereaux Jr. (Bob Odenkirk) is the chair of the fictional Railton College’s English department, a position he wandered into despite his complete lack of interest in teaching. In truth, Hank wrote a well-received novel years ago and has been treading water ever since. Unable to write anything new, he’s largely given up on his dreams of literary acclaim and come to accept mediocrity as his lot in life. Now he spends his days dozing through seminars at a run-down college where his novel isn’t even sold in the student bookstore.

After battering his way out of the Saul Goodman mold that made him famous with the bloody-knuckled actioner Nobody, Odenkirk is given the chance to transform in a way that’s less physically rigorous but no less effective. Silver-haired with a beard that’s ripe for ponderous stroking, Hank is a picture-perfect depiction of middle-aged malaise. He delivers every line with a heaping dose of sarcasm, constantly making jokes but never laughing. Yet Odenkirk still manages to convey the little emotions beneath this protective layer of irony.

Hank is most at ease at home with his wife, Lily (Mireille Enos), a light and smiling presence who can laugh at the imperfections of life. And he enjoys some lively bro banter with fellow racketball player and college field hockey enthusiast Tony (Diedrech Bader). But Hank’s problems—and by extension the show’s—begin whenever he steps foot on campus.

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A college English department is a tricky environment to accurately capture on screen. The school’s faculty all fit roughly into recognizable academic types: the rough-talking, hard-drinking older professor, Billie (Nancy Robertson); the poet-professor, Gracie Dubois (Suzanne Cryer), who’s made her career by carving out a niche so small that there’s little room for any other scholars; and the swaggering chest-thumper, Paul Rourke (Cedric Yarbrough), who loudly proclaims the continued greatness of dead white men like Walt Whitman.

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Watching these characters argue over parking spaces and take pot-shots at each other’s work simply isn’t all that fun, at least in the first two episodes made available to critics. HBO’s Succession is definitive proof that a series about largely unlikeable characters getting into petty squabbles can be enthralling if executed effectively, but the cast of Lucky Hank simply hasn’t been gifted with the same level of zingers to bounce off one another.

The characters’ antics and idiosyncrasies—disrupting each other’s classes, dedicating lectures to tearing down each other’s work, talking insistently in literary quotations—often verge on the cartoonish. The supporting players all seem like characters in a sitcom while Hank is living in a decidedly less zany dimension. More importantly, they just aren’t very funny.

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Lucky Hank does traffic in some interesting ideas about the generational divide between faculty and students, like when Gracie offers an anecdote about winning her stern father’s approval by composing poems as a child, only to be met with horrified stares from her Gen-Z students. On the other hand, the recurring voiceover that provides us with direct access to Hank’s thoughts could be ably summed up as “Old Man Yells at Cloud.” When he’s grumbling about young people today and their delicate feelings, Hank sounds indistinguishable from so many boomer comics and pundits who make their living complaining about avocado toast and smartphones.

At the end of Lucky Hank’s second episode, the viewer actually get to see Hank lower his defenses a bit and engage with another writer in an open, meaningful way. The music picks up and Odenkirk’s performance softens for a moment that’s clearly designed to tug at the heartstrings. Except at this point, there’s nothing much on the other end…yet.

Score: 
 Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Mireille Enos, Diedrech Bader, Cedric Yarbrough, Suzanne Cryer, Olivia Scott Welch, Sara Amini, Nancy Robertson  Network: AMC

Ross McIndoe

Ross McIndoe is a Glasgow-based freelancer who writes about movies and TV for The Quietus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Wisecrack, and others.

1 Comment

  1. What a garbage review. Did you actually watch the first two episodes with your eyes open?
    The only problem I’ve got with the series is they didn’t drop all 8 episodes. Definitely would’ve binged the lot.
    4/5 from me. I would’ve given it 5 stars, but Mireille Enos, is only in the first two episodes.

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